The travelling bachelor

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Malesherbes

This diary records the individuals and sights that he saw while in England. There are many observations of life in London, e.g. parks, buildings, paintings, food. Outside of London he visited many towns, including Manchester and its cotton mills as well as the steel mills of Birmingham. He relates his visit to Drury Lane and the dramatic performance of Sarah Siddons. Some of the people he met included Sir Joseph Banks, Sir Charles Blagden, Matthew Boulton, Joseph Priestley, William Pitt the Younger, and Benjamin Vaughan. He also visited and described the gardens at Kew. The diary includes several sketches, including the plan of Blenheim Palace, and also a table of distances traveled.

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edited and translated by Jürgen Buchenau

"This rich anthology provides a glimpse of modern Mexico through the eyes of foreign observers. Some of these selections are by well-known authors (Alexander von Humboldt, John Reed, B. Traven, Evelyn Waugh). Some are unpublished pieces by little-known writers, and six are available here for the first time in English." "The writings fall into four periods: the transitions to independence and Mexico's first decades as a sovereign country (1800-1867), the era of Liberal modernization (1867-1910), the Mexican Revolution (1910-1940), and the post-World War II era. Four major topics show up repeatedly: ethnicity, gender, and race; cultural differences between Mexicans and foreigners; political stability and instability; and the economy and its impact on Mexicans. Although observers expressed a wide range of view-points on these issues, they agreed in finding a stunning degree of ethnic and regional diversity as well as what they saw as stark contrasts between urban and rural, rich and poor, modernity and tradition." "In addition to Anglo-American authors, the anthology includes selections by German, French, Norwegian, and Spanish authors. Just over a third of the pieces are by women, who offer glimpses of private worlds closed to men, such as convent life, relations between women and their servants, and household affairs"--Page 4 of cover.

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Marco Polo

Join the 13th century merchants Marco, Niccolo and Maffeo Polo as they journey from their native city of Venice to the faraway land of Cathay, or China. There, young Marco will meet Kublai Khan, the ruler of the vast Mongolian empire. Read about his many adventures serving the Khan in the lands East of Europe, and his adventures coming back home to Venice. This medieval book, dictated by Marco while imprisoned in Genoa, was one of the inspirations of the Age of Exploration during the Renaissance, and it still intrigues readers today to learn of the Polo's adventures in the far East.

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William Harrison

Presents a portrait of daily life in Tudor England, including food and diet, laws, clothing, punishments for criminals, languages, lodging, and the appearance of the people.